When a plurality of electric wires are bundled together and laid out, it is necessary to identify the respective circuits of these electric wires for the purpose of a wiring operation in which the electric wires are connected to a connector and for cases of malfunctions and maintenance during use. In order to identify these circuits, for example, the insulating coatings that cover the core wires of the electric wires may be colored.
In particular, wire harnesses to be laid out in automobiles are fabricated by bundling together a large number of electric wires, and as the number of circuits and the size of a connector increase, it is necessary to identify the circuits of an ever larger number of electric wires. Therefore, a large number of colors are used for electric wires, and some electric wires have patterns of stripes, dots, and the like that have colors that are different from that of a ground color (base color), which is a single color, thus causing a problem in that it is expensive to manufacture and manage a large number of types of electric wires.
In order to solve the foregoing problem, e.g. in Japanese Patent No. JP 4644977, the applicant provides electric wires for an automobile, where 13 colors at most are used for the electric wires included in a wire harness, and there are electric wires that have only a single ground color out of the 13 colors as well as electric wires having striped patterns having colors different from the ground color. It should be noted that nowadays, the above-mentioned 13 colors are used as a standard for the number of colors widely used for electric wires for a vehicle.